Beehives are made up of “boxes” each holding a number of frames on which bees build honeycomb which the beekeeper harvests. The boxes are stacked one on top of the other to form a stack. A standard box holds 8 or 10 frames.
Typically, the first and second box up from the ground contain the breeding areas of the hive (the brood), and the higher boxes are used to store the bees gathering honey.
The Varroa mite is a parasite which breeds within the brood in the breeding area of the hive, the bottom one or two boxes. The Varroa mite, also known as the Varroa Destructor, presents a serious threat to bee populations. The mite can damage bees directly, or indirectly by introducing bacterial and viral infections.
Known methods for treating the Varroa mite include hanging devices impregnated in an active substance (a miticide) within the hive. The active substance is toxic to the Varroa mite but non-toxic to the bees. The bees transfer the substance throughout the hive and to the mites through contact with the impregnated device, for example by crawling over the surfaces of the device.
One of the contributing factors in the current dire Varroa mite problem has been the expense of existing mitacide application devices. This expense of existing devices has forced many Beekeepers to under treat or fail to treat their hives which may have contributed to an explosion in mite numbers per season, aggravated by high hive densities.
The increase in mite numbers has facilitated the spread of mites from contaminated sites to clean sites, often to the despair of beekeepers who have spent a great deal of money keeping Varroa mites under control in their own operations. There are many anecdotal reports of existing synthetic miticides not working as designed. It is possible these reports are in fact the result of under treating due to the high expense of treatment devices.
Some hives have extremely well developed hygienic traits which causes the bees to vigorously work at removing any foreign object from the hive, by ‘chewing’ through a foreign object with their mandibles. This trait presents a major challenge when designing a device that will be placed in a hive.
Due to the bees' trait of working to remove foreign objects, devices for providing a miticide to a hive are typically made from a plastics/polymer material, e.g. impregnated polymer strips, since the bees are incapable of removing/destroying the plastic devices. However, the plastic devices are extremely environmentally unfriendly. Bee keepers can accumulate large volumes of the used plastic devices, and this plastic waste can be difficult to legally dispose of due to its inherently toxic nature.